Mastermind Grand Final Preview

If we boil it down purely to a matter of statistics, then here it is.

Heat	Isabelle Heward	The Life and Films of Rita Hayworth	12	0	14	0	26	0
Semi	Isabelle Heward	The Daughters of George III	9	0	12	0	21	0
Heat	Mohan Mudigonda	Nirvana	11	1	12	3	23	4
Semi	Mohan Modigonda	The Asterix Stories 1961-1987	10	1	12	3	22	4
Heat	Steven Marc Rhodes	Nicholas Hawksmoor	12	0	19	0	31	0
Semi	Steven Marc Rhodes	Herbert Howells	13	0	10	0	23	0
Heat	Lynn Edwards	The Forsyte Novels by John Galsworthy	15	0	15	0	30	0
Semi	Lynn Edwards	Mary of Teck	8	0	13	0	21	0
Heat	Frances Slack	The Musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein	12	0	17	0	29	0
Semi	Frances Slack	The Films of William Goldman	10	0	10	3	20	3
Heat	John Cockerill	British Race Courses	12	0	16	3	28	3
Semi	John Cockerill	Captain James Cook	12	0	12	0	24	0

That’s a lot of information, but how much does it actually tell us? Well, if we aggregate the totals, then it looks like this: -

Steven Marc Rhodes	25	0	29	0	54	0
John Cockerill	24	0	28	3	52	3
Lynn Edwards	23	0	28	0	51	0
Frances Slack	22	0	27	3	49	3
Isabelle Heward	21	0	26	0	47	0
Mohan Mudigonda	21	2	24	6	45	8

Does that help us to make predictions? Not necessarily. What it does do is help us make observations. One very interesting thing that the table reveals is that the contenders with the lowest aggregate specialist scores also have the lowest aggregate GK scores, and those with the highest specialists also have the highest GKs. Both Mohan and Isabelle had good enough general knowledge to overhaul 2 point deficits in their semis. However, with the quality of the field in a grand final, it would be extremely difficult to do the same again. Put in simple terms, if you don’t manage to be, at the very least, at the leader’s shoulder when you turn around for home, then it’s going to be extremely difficult.

So does the fact that Steven Marc Rhodes heads the aggregate totals make him favourite? Good question. It certainly suggests that he’s going to go well. However if we look beyond the aggregate we can make an observation there. Steven produced a good score of 12 on Specialist in his heat, but a brilliant score of 13 in his semi. On the other hand he produced a decent 10 on GK in his semi, but a brilliant 19 on GK in his heat. It just suggests a little inconsistency. Now, if he produces a specialist round like his semi, together with a GK round like his heat, then he’s a strong favourite. However if he produces a specialist round like his heat, and a specialist round like his semi, then it could be a lot closer.

You could say something similar about John Cockerill’s specialist rounds. He scored 12 in both, which makes his semi performance notably better than his heat. What you can say about John’s GK rounds are that they are both extremely good performances, and there’s no reason to suggest he won’t replicate this in the final. I’m not going to make predictions about who will win, but if I were I’d definitely have John on the podium.

Our two mid-table contenders, Lynn Edwards and Frances Slack are interesting. Compared with her SS round in the heat, Lynn underperformed in the semi, while Frances held her form well in the semi SS round, while underperforming in the GK compared with her fantastic 17 in the heat. This is just my feeling, and by all means feel free to disagree, but I always feel happier about the chances of contenders who produce consistently impressive GK performances. Predicting how someone is going to do on Specialist is a very inexact Science – there are so many things which can go wrong and foil weeks of diligent preparation.  However, if you’ve had two impressive GK performances in heat and semi, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that you’re more likely to do so in the final as well. So, of the two I just fancy Lynn Edwards’ chances a little more, despite her relatively modest specialist in the heat.

Does that mean I’m completely dismissing the chances of LAM readers Isabelle Heward and Mohan Mudigonda? No, not at all, that would be a foolish thing to do. What I am saying is that I believe that it will require a better performance than either managed in heat and semi if they are going to win. Now, as we know, the winner will be the player who deserves it on the day, who puts in the best overall performance in the final. But I can’t help hoping that Isabelle, appearing in her first final after so many semi-final appearances, goes well. But then I hope that everyone can do themselves justice. All of these contenders can feel very proud about what they have achieved in Mastermind this year, and will have nothing to be ashamed of whatever happens in the final. Nonetheless, I wish them all luck, and hope that they will be able to sit back when al the dust has settled, and be happy that they did the best they could.

Mastermind: Semi Final 6

We start in the same way that we started with each of the previous semis, by casting an eye over the previous performances of our plucky contenders.

John Cockerill	British Race Courses	12	0	16	3	28	3
Adrian Staton	Sir Michael Caine	13	0	15	3	28	3
Alison Rawlinson	Flanders and Swann	11	4	16	1	27	5
Keith Nickless	The Faces 1969-75	9	0	17	0	26	0
Martin Lloyd	The Battle of Trafalgar	11	1	13	5	24	6

You’re maybe thinking what I’m thinking – there are some pretty hefty performances on GK there. Of course, first round GK can only tell you so much about semi-final potential – I think the fact that the GK rounds have been a notch harder in the semis than they seemed to be in the heats have caught out some of our semi-finalists in earlier heats. Still, I have to say that the manner of both John Cockerill’s and Adrian Staton’s victories in the first round suggested that they would be in the mix.

Keith Nickless was first to go. Keith had the advantage of having been in a semi-final before, a few years ago. Of all tonight’s contenders he had produced the most modest performance in specialist in the heats, and so he achieved the feat tonight of scoring more highly in his semi-final specialist than he had in his heat, despite having had 30 seconds less in which to do it. I would never have forgiven myself if I hadn’t got his question about Morecambe and Wise appearing as themselves in the final episode of the Sweeney. Keith took 10 points, and as a rule of thumb, a double figure score in a semi final specialist round will usually put you into contention.

Sadly for our repechage runner-up, Alison Rawlinson, she was some way short of this mark in her own specialist round on Mary Seacole. It was difficult for me to put my finger on exactly what it was, but there was something about Alison’s round which made it seem as if she was not quite as comfortable with her subject as she had been with Flanders and Swann in the heat. 7 is nothing to be ashamed of by any means, but making up a gap of at least 3 points in GK was already looking like a tall order, and there were still three contenders to come.

The first of these, John Cockerill, had impressed me with the way he’d gone about his business in his heat. It’s pretty rare that you get the feeling that a contender hasn’t worked hard enough on their specialist in the heat, but it’s just as rare that you get the feeling that the contender could have gone on answering questions on their subject for the full half hour. I had that feeling with John’s round tonight on Captain Cook – it was a cracking round which saw John grab the round by the scruff of the neck, and not let it go until the buzzer. With a 2 point lead nothing was yet guaranteed, but he had certainly made the best start possible.

From Captain Cook to Tranmere Rovers FC, and our fourth contender of the show, Martin Lloyd. Martin had scored a pretty useful 11 on The Battle of Trafalgar in the heat. The nature of the task facing him was that he really needed a score of that ilk off a 90 second round. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he produced a pretty good round to take 8 points, but faced his own uphill battle if he was going to overhaul John in the GK.

Adrian Staton is a man after my own heart in choosing to answer on the travel writings of Bill Bryson. Put simply, I happily devour everything Bill Bryson writes that I can get my hands on. Apart from the fact that he’s incredibly interesting, and funny, his prose is so beautifully constructed and readable. So I’m in a position to say that I know Bill Bryson’s travel writing well enough to say that the questions in the round were testing, yes, but not unfairly difficult. So the causes of Adrian’s problems with his round remain a matter of speculation. What we can say is that he fell into a pass spiral, and at the end of the round had scored 3 with 5 passes.

All the more reason, then, to praise the GK round that Adrian put in. Somehow I doubt it helped that John made his comment about taking on a writer who has written so many books. John, I know that you’re only trying to be sympathetic, but I can’t believe that most people would find it helpful to have attention drawn to the disappointing specialist round they’ve just put in. Adrian’s GK round was a brave display of calm in the face of disappointment, and was well worth the 12 points he picked up – a performance comparable to his 15 off 2 and a half minutes in the first round heat.

I mentioned at the start of the review that the relative gentleness of the first round GK scores can make it difficult to separate the competent from the good, and the good from the great, and maybe this was demonstrated by Alison’s GK round. Maybe the questions just didn’t suit, and maybe it was just a bad day at the office. Whatever the case she needed 8 to equal Adrian’s 15, and couldn’t quite make it. She scored 7 for a total of 14.

Essentially the contest really got down to the nitty gritty with the commencement of Martin Lloyd’s GK round. It was another very good round, and I dare say that Martin is a quizzer, looking at the range and breadth of questions that he answered correctly. A score of 12 and no passes meant that John would need to score 8 and no passes just to equal his score. Maybe not a huge score, no, but enough to place many a contender within the corridor of doubt.

We’ve seen Keith Nickless comfortably negotiating his pathway through that particular corridor before, and so I had a feeling that he would find the double figure score he needed to take the lead from Martin. He did too, although if truth were told there really wasn’t a great deal in it. He was level on score and passes with Martin when he guessed the answer to the last question, correctly. That raised the bar to 21 and no passes for a tie break, with the banker paying 22 and over.

In pretty much any game or sport where skill is involved, the best practitioners can make it look easy. John always looked as if he was going to make the target, and he did too, with a little time to spare. By the end of the round his own score of 12 had taken the total to 24, putting daylight between himself and the chasing pack. This was a performance which ear marks John as a person to watch in the final. Mind you, there are another 5 of those as well.

Well played all – and John, best of luck in the final.

The Details

Keith Nickless	The Sweeney	10	0	11	0	21	0
Alison Rawlinson	Mary Seacole	7	1	7	2	14	3
John Cockerill	Captain James Cook	12	0	12	0	24	0
Martin Lloyd	Tranmere Rovers FC	8	0	12	0	20	0
Adrian Staton	The Travel Writings of Bill Bryson	3	5	12	2	15	7

It would be a lot easier if I was nicer, or failing that, just a bad quizzer. . .

I’m not ashamed of it. Well, not very. No, not that, I mean playing online quiz games. When I’m not working or marking, and I’m watching something on the telly with about half of my attention I’ll sometimes play a quiz on the laptop at the same time. If you’ve been with LAM for a few years you may remember previous posts on games like Superbuzzer. I’ll come back to that. Well, I’ve hardly played on Superbuzzer for over half a year, mainly because I’ve been devoting all of my online quizzing time to a game called Quiz Panic. It’s a multiple choice quiz, with the point being to get to the correct answer more quickly than the other players. There are a number of challenges – for example – answer 10 consecutive questions correctly – and when you have completed 10 challenges, then your onscreen character – a ‘quizzy’ – evolves. Look, nobody said this was highly intellectual, right?

The problem is that once you’ve completed 100 challenges, then your quizzy has become as evolved as it is ever going to be. Maybe they’ll expand it at some future time – who knows. However, for now, once you’ve completed 100 challenges, then that’s it. You can still play of course, but there’s no great goal to it other than keeping winning. So of course it’s lost it’s allure. In the last few days I’ve been back to Superbuzzer, and let’s be fair, these few days have reminded me about one of the things that made Quiz Panic more alluring for the last half year or so. On Quiz Panic, there’s no chat.

Put simply, I’d forgotten just how ignorant, rude, and let’s call a spade a spade, vitriolic some of the players on Superbuzzer actually are when you beat them, or in extreme cases, even when you don’t. I’m sorry to say it, but judging by past experience, and by the experience of the last few days, we Brits are among the worst. I mean, it’s inherent in the DNA of pretty much any game that there is at least a chance that you are going to lose. Yes, I hate to lose, especially to lose a quiz, but it’s going to happen from time to time, and if you can’t cope with that, then you’re better off not playing in the first place.

You might say -  ah, yes, well this is just one aspect of the phenomenon by which people will use the supposed anonymity of the internet to say things to other people which they would never dream of saying face to face, and there’s certainly something in that line of argument. I don’t say for one moment that this is limited to quizzing. Yet in my experience there’s something about quizzing which brings out the petty-mindedness, ignorance and rudeness of a certain type of individual. In the last 18 months or so I’ve stopped going out to pub quizzes, with the exception of the Thursday night quiz in the rugby club. That’s a special case, being that I’m a regular setter, and my team don’t win most weeks. There’s several factors which have resulted in this outcome, but one of them has definitely been the fact that John and I would find a new quiz, and start attending. We’d be welcomed for the first few weeks, but if we won the majority of quizzes for more than a couple of months, then the nastiness would inevitably creep in from at least one of the regular teams and/or the question master(s). A few years ago this only had the effect of spurring me on – the more another team were nasty and made it clear they didn’t want us to keep coming, the more determined I’d be to be back and try to win the next week. Now, though, I don’t need it. Whether it’s fair or not, I don’t want to be the cause of the nastiness and bad feeling any more.

Then there was the business with the league last year. I didn’t write about it at the time, because I didn’t want to risk potentially spreading any more bad feeling. Basically, a resolution was made at last year’s AGM to change the constitution of the League to make a new rule that anyone who a) lived outside the town, and b) had won a national quiz competition would be ineligible to play in the league. As far as I know, I was the only person playing at that time to whom both of these criteria applied. The resolution was defeated, partly because it had not been put forward in the correct fashion, and partly because fewer people were in favour of it than against it. I tried very hard not to treat it personally, and while my ego can even accept that there may well be people out there who just find my personal qualities so objectionable that they have no wish to be in the same room as me for a couple of hours twice a year, I think that the fact that my team completed the league and cup double every year since I joined may have had something to do with it as well. Which is not to say that this success is all down to me at all, for we’re a team, not one individual player. I’d guess that I’m probably a more identifiable target due to the Mastermind thing.

Had this happened three or four years earlier I’d probably have been a bit more bullish about it – along the lines of, look, if you don’t like getting beaten in the league, then why don’t you get better at your quizzing? Do some work for it etc. etc. etc. But the fact is that I used to play in the Neath Quiz League back in the mid and late 90s. That was a league which folded, and it was only years later that I found out that some of the teams quit playing partly because the league was being dominated by one strong team – the one I was a member of. The last thing I want to see is this happening again. So what I said was that I would not play this year. However, that didn’t mean I wanted our team, the Explorers, packing in as well. So I also said that I would drive team members to the matches, ask questions if required, basically do whatever was required to keep the team playing in the league.

This was all well and good for the first few weeks of the season. Terry from the Thursday night quiz in the rugby club agreed to play, and everything seemed ok. However, sadly our friend and long time teammate Brian was taken into hospital, and passed away from a long term illness. We tried to find another player, but to no avail. Frankly, I thought that the idea of us playing with only three players while I looked on would have been ridiculous. So I filled in, and have been doing so since November. We’re now at the stage that with 6 games left to play we only need to win one more to be mathematically certain of winning the league. And don’t get me wrong, that’s not down to me. The team won all of their 5 or 6 league matches without me at the start of the season, and there’s no reason to think that they wouldn’t have won any of the subsequent matches if I hadn’t. But it does worry me that I have not been able to keep my word, and that the underlying perception of what’s happening in the league won’t have been changed by what has happened this season, albeit that we were knocked out of the cup. So I’m wondering if I need to just say – thanks for the fun and the memories – and walk away from the team completely next year. If they can keep it going themselves, as I hope that they can, well and good, but if they can’t, then l maybe just have to accept that. Because if I involve myself in any way, I won’t be able to stop myself from filling in and playing if I’m needed. Let me be clear about this. I don’t want to stop playing, I still enjoy the Monday nights very much. But in all honesty I don’t know if it’s doing the league any good if I continue. I haven’t spoken to the team about this yet, but it’s a conversation I’ll need to have sooner rather than later.